We hold this truth as self-evident: our lives, work, and well-being are interdependent. Everything and everyone is — or can be — connected. This new reality challenges the traditional logic when it comes to leadership development. The interdependent companies we’ve studied have expanded from an exclusive focus on leader development, which is about character, competence, quantity of individuals in defined roles, to leadership development, which is the expansion of a collective’s shared beliefs and practices for creating direction, alignment, and commitment (DAC). Leadership development, in other words, targets the leadership culture of the organization. DAC, we have found, is produced by dependent, independent, or interdependent leadership cultures.

Direction presents the question: How will we decide where to go?

Alignment: How will we coordinate our work?

Commitment: How will we stay engaged and accountable?

This shift in logic from leader to leadership has two very practical implications. First, it draws attention to the outcomes of leadership, DAC. It’s the practical “why” of leadership that can get lost when the main focus is on competence and character of the individual leader. Second, this shift draws attention to the collective capacity of the organization to produce these outcomes. This can be liberating and generative, since any beliefs and practices that produce DAC can be identified and targeted for development.

The shift in focus from leader development to leadership development means a progression along a journey from dependence to independence to interdependence. Unfortunately, you can’t skip a step.

The United States Postal Service is a good example of a largely dependent culture that gets direction by command and control, achieves alignment by compliance to a system of rules and regulations, and realizes commitment through a combination of loyalty and job security. The challenge for the USPS is to grow a more independent culture — before it can consider interdependence — in which self-authorizing, entrepreneurial leaders find novel and often local solutions to increasingly severe constraints. Godspeed to you Mr. Potter.

Ketchum, a global communications consultancy, has an independent culture. Experts, achievers, and creatives become “heroes” to the client and to each other. People in the organization share the fervent belief that heroism of this kind leads to DAC, and so the belief is realized in behavior. But Ketchum believes its future success is tied to a developing an interdependent leadership culture, one more adept at building DAC across borders in a global agency, one more able to deal with the complexity of integrating local practices with global strategies. In this vision Ketchum not only inhabits but co-creates the emerging communications landscape interdependently with its clients and collaborators.

One highly interdependent organization we studied that has already made this shift in logic and practices is Resources for Human Development (RHD), a national human services nonprofit with 4000 employees in 14 states averaging 28% annual growth over several decades. Centralization is a key to their financial oversight and their unique corporate culture. And yet decentralization is essential for their ability to respond to local needs with entrepreneurial solutions. Their interdependent approach to this alignment challenge has been to explicitly acknowledge and name it: “cent-decent.” They take measures to build their collective capacity to manage — to lead — this tension.

For example, regular Cent-decent Meetings are open to all and use a rotating facilitator (the role not the person). Everyone owns such meetings. People show up with the cent-decent issues they want to talk about: should training and education be centrally designed and mandated or left up to the units? Should units have the freedom to create their own clinical services? As conversations like this continue and develop, decisions emerge and are ratified by directors. Sometimes decisions are made that take the organization down completely new pathways; DAC often emerges from ongoing dialogue. The search for a third-way through the cent-decent polarity never ends.

The good news for Ketchum and for everyone is that people all over are experimenting with ways of being interdependent — and they are trying to connect with you. Younger generations, we have found, are more interdependently minded — and would love to work for you. Can you change culture? Yes you can if you look at it this way: You are not the only one with a declaration of interdependence.

Partner Center

The email and password entered aren’t matching to our records. Please try again, or reset your password. If you have a username from our previous site, start by using that. Please See our FAQ for more.

If you are signing in for the first time on the new HBR.org but have an existing account, please enter your existing user name and password to migrate your account.Please see Frequently Asked Questions for more information.